Articles Tagged 'British Words'

The English language has a nerve claiming to be Anglo-Saxon or a pure-breed of any sort. It’s a mishmash of dialects, languages and one-off words that come from several migrating nations—both into the British Isles and from the various nations Britain colonized—dating back to Roman times. And one of the largest influences on the development of modern-day […]

Cornwall is a place in which the English language is subject to a number of warping influences. That’s partly to do with the lasting twist of the Cornish language. Once thought to have died out, it has been the subject of a fierce revival in recent years, bringing fresh perspective to local slang terms that […]

Musicians, particularly those of a hipster disposition, we have an invaluable service to offer as you gather together into your various groups and ensembles. Rather than pinching the stage names of other performers and making your own, based on bad puns—like Joanna Gruesome, Ringo Deathstarr, Dananananaykroyd and Ryan Adams*—why not trawl through some of the […]

In 1983, the venerable British pop magazine Smash Hits (sadly no longer with us) published a feature called “The Things People Said,” in which Tom Hibbert pulled together a lexicon of youth slang, across the rocking ’50s, the groovy ’60s, the hippy ’70s and the heavy metal ’80s. For a young fan of pop culture […]

English is a mongrel tongue. It’s a language that betrays influences from every modern language you could care to name and several that no one speaks any more. The British picked up these words as they set out to invade and conquer the world, sending them back home with the exotic spices, jewels, fruits and […]

Ripper Street returns to BBC AMERICA this Wednesday (April 29) at 10/9c for a third season. There are new cast members—including Sherlock’s Louise Brealey—new stories and all manner of unpleasant goings-on in the grottiest parts of Victorian London. So, to get you in the mood (and possibly upset your stomach) here’s a brief working definition […]

Recently, the Independent published a brief list of the words that the current speaker of the House of Commons has banned from the debate floor. These include the kind of direct insults one might expect—idiot, rat, swine—if witnessing people were trying to pick a fight without swearing. Not that there’s an outright ban on swearing itself, […]

This list is rife with bewilderment and confusion, as a British mind attempts to make sense of terms, names and phrases that simply do not happen on the European side of the Atlantic. Bachelorette If you’re about to get married, and you want to throw a party to commemorate the passing of your single-ness, that’s […]

There are many opportunities for linguistic confusion between Brits and Americans—slang, Southern slang and pronunciations can all cause blank looks, but there’s a whole category of words poised to confuse, of which we’re often not aware. Chat up In the U.K., this verb means “to hit on” or “talk flirtatiously” with someone. In the U.S. […]

What it is, right… To judge by popular culture alone—Gavin & Stacey, I am looking at you—the Welsh are presented as a largely cheery nation, fond of the rugby and the ale, with a few linguistic peculiarities that are all charm and whimsy, like “Whose boots are those shoes?” “Now in a minute” and “What […]